Major Prophets of To-Day

by Edwin E. Slosson

Pessimism was the militant philosophy of the nineteenth century, and its effects are increasingly felt in the present world-wide tendency to suicide, individual suicide due to the failure of the instinct to live, and race suicide due to the failure to propagate. But even pessimism, harmful as it is upon humanity, may, according to Metchnikoff, have its uses:

It is pessimism which has been the first to draw up a true indictment of human nature, and if pain is to be regarded as useful in its quality of danger signal we should equally recognize that the pessimistic view of the universe is a step onward in the evolution of humanity. Without pessimism we might easily sink into a kind of contented fatalism, and end in quietism, in the manner of many religions.—"Nature of Man", p. 194.

The difference between the philosophic pessimist and the scientific optimist may be illustrated by two incidents. In 1831 Schopenhauer, in spite of his theory that life was evil and worse than nothing, fled from Berlin to Frankfort at the first outbreak of the cholera. But we recall that Metchnikoff, professed optimist and lover of life, went in 1911 to Manchuria into the center of the bubonic plague in its most virulent form in order to learn how to relieve human suffering. The difference is one between whiners and helpers.

Schopenhauer wrote that "an alteration of the atmosphere so slight that it cannot be detected by chemistry brings about cholera or yellow fever or black death." Metchnikoff's dry comment on this is: "Humanity will be fortunate if the pessimistic philosophers prove as wrong about their other grievances as they have proved about disease and medicine." And he adds that if Koch had discovered his vibrio in 1831, philosophy would have taken a different course, for Schopenhauer need not have been frightened away from Berlin, and Hegel, who died of the cholera, might have gone on with the development of his idealism.

Another paradox appears in the fact that Metchnikoff, who makes little account of altruism in his system of morality, has devoted his life to arduous and dangerous researches for the benefit of others, and, without hope of reward in another life in either the Buddhist or Christian sense, has labored assiduously to lay the foundations of a science by which posterity can profit. He regards altruism not as a permanent and indispensable virtue, but as something to be gradually got rid of, at least in its extreme forms of heroism and self-sacrifice. As this is one of the most striking and, it seems to me, most original points in his philosophy, a passage must be quoted:

As it is highly probable that with the advance of civilization the greatest evils of humanity will become lessened, and may even disappear, the sacrifices to be made will also become less. Now that there is a serum which protects against plague, there is no room for the heroism of the doctors who used to incur the greatest danger in fighting epidemics. Until lately doctors used to risk their life in treating the throats of diphtheritic patients. A young doctor who was a friend of mine, of high ability and promise, died from diphtheria contracted under these conditions. He met his death, in isolation from his friends in case of affecting them, with the utmost heroism. Now that the antidiphtheritic serum has been discovered, such heroism would be unnecessary. The advance of science has removed the occasion of such sacrifices.

It is now very long since there has been opportunity for the heroism which steeled the hand of Abraham to sacrifice his only son to his religion. Human sacrifice, based on the highest morality, has become more and more rare, and will finally disappear. Rational morality, although it may admire such conduct, has no use for it. So also it may foresee a time when men will be so highly developed that instead of being delighted to take advantage of the sympathy of their fellows, they will refuse it absolutely. Neither the Kantian idea of virtue, doing good as a pure duty, nor that of Herbert Spencer, according to which men have an instinctive need to help their fellows, will be realized in the future. The ideal will rather be that of men who will be self-sufficient and who will no longer permit others to do them good.—"Prolongation of Life", p. 323.

As he objects to conditions that demand sympathy and self-sacrifice from one person for another, so also he opposes any state of society that involves the sacrifice or subordination of the individual for the benefit of the community as a whole.

It is most probable that no shade of socialism will be able to solve the problem of social life with a sufficient respect for the maintenance of individual liberty. None the less the progress of human knowledge will inevitably bring about a great leveling of human fortunes. Intellectual culture will lead men to give up many things that are superfluous or even harmful, and that are still thought indispensable by most people. The conceptions that the greatest good fortune consists in the complete evolution of the normal cycle of human life and that this goal can be reached most easily by plain and sober habits will convince men of the folly of much of the luxury that now shortens human existence. Whilst the rich will choose a simpler mode of life and the poor will be able to live better, none the less, private property, acquired or inherited, may be maintained. Evolution must be gradual, and much effort and new knowledge is required. Sociology, a new-born science, must learn of biology, her older sister. Biology teaches us that in proportion that the organization becomes more complex, the consciousness of individuality develops, until a point is reached at which individuality cannot be sacrificed to the community. Amongst low creatures such as Myxomycetes and Siphonophora, the individuals disappear wholly or almost wholly in the community; but the sacrifice is small, as in these creatures the consciousness of individuality has not appeared. Social insects are in a stage intermediate between that of the lower animals and man. It is only in man that the individual has definitely acquired consciousness, and for that reason a satisfactory social organization cannot sacrifice it on pretext of the common good. To this conclusion the study of the social evolution of living beings leads me. It is plain that the study of human individuality is a necessary step in the organization of the social life of human beings.—"Prolongation of Life", p. 231.

One might think in reading "The Nature of Man" that Metchnikoff was laying the foundations of a pessimistic instead of an optimistic system of philosophy. He begins, as Schopenhauer or Von Hartmann might have done, by showing how ill adapted to his environment is that simian abortion we call man. Among the examples of marvelously perfect adaptation of structure or instinct in nature are cited Darwin's orchids and Fabre's wasps. M. Fabre seems to be indispensable to French philosophers. We have seen that Maeterlinck and Bergson get some of their finest illustrations from this "Homer of the Insects." But man is not so favored of nature as the orchids or wasps:

There can be no doubt but that the human constitution, although in many ways perfect and sublime, exhibits numerous and serious disharmonies which are the source of all our troubles. Not being so well adapted to the conditions of life as orchids are, for example, in the matter of their fertilization by the mediation of insects, or the burrowing wasps for the protection of their young, humanity resembles rather those insects the instinct of which guides them toward the flame which burns their wings.